Rethinking the Dictionary July 7, 2020

Twenty years ago, I started Urban Dictionary as a place for everyone to share their language. It was intended to subvert the authority of the traditional dictionary and to document our messy, weird, and unpredictable language as it evolved. Every day, regular people add thousands of definitions, making it a living cultural document. Since 1999, our community has written over 12 million definitions. I’m proud that Urban Dictionary has become a source of laughter and an irreplaceable reference made by and for the people.

But, over the years, online discourse has changed, and so have the words we’re receiving.

Like other online platforms we’ve been inundated by hate speech and abusive content targeting women, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and other vulnerable groups. Hate speech and abusive content online can cause real harm offline. It can also make people feel unsafe to speak up and share their language, silencing entire groups of people. This is not what we want our platform to be for.

Urban Dictionary plays an important role in defining language on the internet and popular culture. To do this right and to earn the role you’ve entrusted us with, we need to make sure our system measures up to our values. The site has always been a place for people to define the messier edges of language, but we can’t allow it to foster hate.

Words matter — it’s kind of our whole thing here — but actions matter more:

We will not allow Urban Dictionary to be a home for hate speech and abusive content. We support the work of Black Lives Matter to dismantle systemic racism. We accept our own responsibility to fight racism and hate, and acknowledge that we have failed to keep abusive content off our site.

We take this work seriously and it is our priority. We are reviewing our core processes on how words are added, reviewed, published and removed. We are investing in technology and human review to better enforce our standards. We’ll post updates on our progress here.

We will change as hate speech changes. No single fix will work forever. Hate speech and abusive content will evolve, and we’re committed to changing our policies to meet it.

As we rethink the dictionary, we want to hear from you. Urban Dictionary is written by you, and we want you to be involved while we decide what is and isn’t acceptable on it. Please share your thoughts in the form below. In a few weeks, we’ll share what we’ve learned from your feedback.

Thank you,

Aaron Peckham

Founder & CEO

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4580821&forum_id=2#40580112)

It changes from hour to hour.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4580821&forum_id=2#40580129)

Rest in power

Phrase meaning that a deceased cannot rest in peace until society changes due to the circumstances of a death.

People said rest in power for the unarmed man had been shot by the police.

by FooBarBiz October 12, 2017

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4580821&forum_id=2#40580139)

https://www.aclu.org/other/online-free-speech-client-aaron-peckham

ONLINE FREE SPEECH - CLIENT, AARON PECKHAM

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ACLU Defends Free Speech Online >>

Aaron Peckham owns and maintains Urban Dictionary.com, an online dictionary of contemporary slang with more than 400,000 definitions for slang words and phrases.

Urban Dictionary has always been about freedom of expression -- the freedom to share your words and your meanings (and your humor) with the world. I started Urban Dictionary in 1999, and in the last seven years people have sent more than two million definitions to Urban Dictionary. They range from "adorkable" (both dorky and adorable), to "top up music" (music you only listen to when your car's windows are closed), to heated definitions of what we really mean by "liberal" and "conservative." They're funny and opinionated, and each definition gives readers an idea of what the author's life is like.

I'm participating in this lawsuit because I don't see a reason to limit the expression of the site's authors. Everyone deserves the opportunity to express themselves, and everyone deserves the opportunity to understand everyone else. Urban Dictionary tries to make that kind of understanding possible (and be funny at the same time). It's a dictionary that reflects the real world because it gives people the freedom to define the world, in their terms.

Free speech and the Internet go hand in hand, because online, anyone with a computer can be heard. The Internet equalizes people like that -- no matter how much money you have, or how old you are, you can connect with a huge number of people. And it's getting easier as computers become cheaper and easier to use.

Urban Dictionary is one of a huge number of sites where people can talk and think about the world. It's a place for people to freely express themselves and to write about their lives through the definitions they post. Everyone's a wannabe sociologist, and you can see that come out in Urban Dictionary. It's also a way to watch our language evolve and to see what's hot in pop culture.

I'm working on the second Urban Dictionary book. The first one came out in 2005, with a few thousand of the site's best definitions. Language changes quickly, so it's out of date already. In addition to the book, the site has shown up in lots of other places, like a court case in the U.K., trademark disputes, newspaper articles and graduation speeches. Urban Dictionary shows that the voice of the people is a great resource for figuring out what's going on in the language and the culture.

Urban Dictionary evolved to what it is today because people used it for their own purpose -- self-expression. My job is to support that use, and that's why I'm participating in this lawsuit.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4580821&forum_id=2#40580182)